Volvo promises no deaths in new Volvos by 2020

A safety promise with a deadline

In a Reuters report from its crash test complex in Gothenburg, published on 1 May 2008, Volvo Cars set out its aim to eliminate death and injury in its cars by 2020. Reuters reported that no carmaker had set a target date for such a goal before.¹ Volvo put the commitment into its own words in a release on 14 July 2008: "In the shorter perspective the aim is that by 2020 no-one should be killed or injured in a Volvo."² The longer horizon went further: "At the Volvo Car Corporation, the vision is to design cars that should not crash."² The goal later settled into the formula that by 2020 no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car.³

Jan Ivarsson, head of Safety Strategy at the Volvo Car Corporation, compared the car with the aeroplane: "We don't accept that people lose their lives in airplane accidents, so why should we regard car accidents as inevitable?"² The ambition rested on Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team, which had studied crashes since 1970 and held data on more than 36,000 accidents.²

From reputation to commitment

Safety was already the attribute most closely tied to the brand. Volvo recalled in the same release that it had made its three-point seatbelt available to other manufacturers free of charge.² Reuters quoted Jeff Bartlett, deputy online auto editor at Consumer Reports: "No other brand dominates a category the way safety is owned by Volvo".¹ The same report also quoted Christian Mueller, industry consultant at Global Insight: "Being safe is not any more the outstanding quality of Volvo".¹

The 2020 goal changed the form of the claim. A reputation is inherited; a target with a date has to be met. By naming a year and a measurable outcome, Volvo turned a general association into a public promise that others could later check against the facts.

Technology as evidence

The promise needed products to point to. On 11 January 2008 Volvo presented City Safety, a system that brakes the car automatically to avoid or mitigate rear-end collisions at speeds up to 30 km/h, as standard equipment on the new XC60.⁴ Volvo cited statistics that 75 percent of reported collisions happen at up to 30 km/h and estimated that the technology could prevent about half of all rear-end collisions.⁴ Jonas Ekmark, manager for Preventive Safety at Volvo Cars Safety Centre, said: "The function offers benefits to all those involved."⁴ As standard equipment, it made the vision visible in an ordinary showroom car.

Turning to the driver

By 2019 Volvo referred to the goal as its Vision 2020 and said that technology alone would not reach zero, so it would address behaviour as well.⁵ On 4 March 2019 it announced that it would limit the top speed of all its cars to 180 km/h from 2020, beginning with model year 2021, and named speeding, intoxication and distraction as the remaining gaps.⁵ Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Car Group, said: "Volvo is a leader in safety: we always have been and we always will be".⁵ On 20 March 2019 Volvo opened a digital library of its safety research to the industry and launched the E.V.A. Initiative on safety gaps between women and men.⁶ Lotta Jakobsson, professor and senior technical specialist at Volvo Cars Safety Centre, said the cars are developed "with the aim to protect all people, regardless of gender, height, shape or weight".⁶ Both moves extended the promise from the car to its driver and to the wider industry.

The deadline and after

An independent study presented in 2019 analysed 62 fatal crashes involving modern Volvo cars in Sweden between 2010 and 2017 and found that almost half of the fatalities in and by Volvo cars could have been prevented by the safety technologies on the 2019 V60.³ When 2020 arrives, Volvo does not report a result of zero. In 2021 Ivarsson, now technical chief at Volvo's safety centre, tells Dagens PS: "The vision is just a vision. It is not a target." He adds: "We have now removed the year 2020 so that it is not confused with a goal."⁷

The wording shifts while the direction stays. In 2022 Jim Rowan, chief executive of Volvo Cars, describes the brand's work as continuing "until cars don't crash anymore, until there are zero collisions".⁸ In 2023 Thomas Broberg, senior technical advisor on safety at Volvo Car Corporation, says: "It's a vision and the vision still remains, yes, definitely."⁹ Volvo's corporate site now states the safety vision without a year: no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo.¹⁰

For the brand, the date gave a long-held reputation urgency and a story to tell for 12 years. Removing it returns the promise to a direction rather than a statistic, while the safety claim itself stays in place.